Running with Scissors, by Agusten Burroughs - I'm reading this book with my jaw dropping

[Sarah Ibarruri]

I never saw the movie, but if this is the bio of Augusten Burroughs (with the names changed, of course), he suffered the great misfortune of being surrounded only by complete psychotics from the time he was born until he finally made his way into the world on his own.

It would be an understatement to say that the family his psychotic mother handed him over to, and who adopted him (the family of her shrink), was completely insane. In fact, that family went beyond insane. The daughters were outright nuts, and you'd have to read it to believe it. The shrink/adoptive father moved psychotic patients into his home, allowed pedophilia to go on, the stay-at-home mom permitted the house to be a filth-pot like those homes that end up shut down by the health department, the entire family was a den of psychoses, beginning with the psychiatrist, whose license was eventually (thank goodness) taken away and could no longer practice.

However, I think the whackiest thing in this story is the fact that this psychiatrist's family actually got upset when they read Burrough's descriptions of them (again, with different names) in Running with Scissors, then sued him and gave interviews to the national media. If that'd been me, I'd have changed my name, never uttered a peep, and gotten myself a whole new identity. I would never have allowed anyone to know I grew up in that. ew.

[bemildred]

1. Sounds like a hippie commune to me.

No rules. Seen lots of that, but not lately.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

3. Were hippie communes ruleless? I kinda thought all groups had rules of one sort or another

I didn't grow up in the hippie era.

[bemildred]

5. Pretty much.

"Do your own thing."

There would be occasional attempts to impose order, but they would be ignored. Not saying that worked very well, mind you. It's difficult to describe how different the mindset and attitudes were from 2012. Post-WWII the USA was very conformist, to be a corporate "organization-man" was the goal of life, and sexism, racism, and any other kind of -ism you can think of were the norm. There were pejorative names for everybody, and it was a great laugh-getter to use them.

The hippies etc. said fuck all that, radical anti-authoritarianism, radical acceptance of people who did not "fit", anarchy in the sense of lack of any controlling order. Of course, that didn't work much better than the current "we've got to watch all the time and control everything" model.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

6. I read that within the hippie movement there was still a huge amount of

mysogyny, with some hippie men being quite narcissistic and feeling themselves superior to women. Was that the case?

[bemildred]

7. Quite.

Any women past puberty were pretty much fair game. Used to piss me off (I'm a guy, I like women, but taking advantage of kids is wrong.) And of course, then as now, there were men who hate women and women who were pissed off at men.

Edit: and to be fair, many women and girls at the time were on board with "free love", I'll never forget driving my babysitter (14) home one night, and listening to her discuss with a girlfriend whether it was time for her to screw her older boyfriend or not.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

8. That is messed up. nt

[bemildred]

9. I could tell you stories.

To be fair, the exploitatilon of jailbait was not something the hippies invented or were even particularly about. That sort of thing was really big and bragged about more in the music world. My first wife told me about the older male friends of her Dad who took advantage of her and thought they were doing her a favor, and I was hit on a few times too.

In the historical context, it was the hippies and radicals that valorized the feminists and sexual equality, but there were a lot of people of both genders at the time just there to party.

It was only after the Raygun revolution that sexual mores changed in the direction of where we are now, and I give a lot of credit for that to the success of the 1st generation feminists.

[dixiegrrrrl]

2. I hve it. I have been reluctant to read it, tho.

It sounds derpessing.
Soem have said it is funny, tho.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

4. Not depressing per se, unless you look at the overall picture...

Most of the book was funny, mixed with revulsion, and a great deal of jaw-dropping amazement that such things could even exist.

[salvorhardin]

10. Turns out it's not so autobiographical

Here's some stuff I dug up when I read Running With Scissors a few years ago.

I wanted to know more about the real life family Augusten Burroughs grew up with so I did some googling around about the facts. He was sued by the family of Dr. Rodolph H. Turcotte, the real family he lived with growing up. Naturally they dispute a lot of the stories in the book, but interviews I've read with their neighbors and Augusten's brother say a lot of it was true and, according to his brother, that he even left out a lot of the wilder stuff.

Anyway, here's the archive of a website of one of Dr. Turcotte's followers who was writing her own biography of Dr. Turcotte. The website doesn't exist any more but the Wayback Machine has caught most of it.
http://web.archive.org/web/20080731095416/http://www.rhturcottemd.com/


And here's the obituary of the priest, the Rev. Joseph Quigley, that was so close to Dr. Turcotte and the family.
http://www.umass.edu/loop/talkingpoints/articles/18882.php

Here's an NPR interview with Augusten Burroughs' mother, Margaret Robinson and a link to her website. Augusten Burroughs was born Christopher Robinson.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6209286
http://www.margaretrobison.com/home.htm

There was a January 2007 Vanity Fair article by Ruth Buzzinger called Ruthless With Scissors that interviewed the Turcotte family, but it isn't available to me online.
http://goo.gl/WuFn

Finally, here's a blog post that gives some background on the lawsuit.
http://thecrapspot.blogspot.com/2006/04/storytelling-compromised-augusten.html

A picture of Dr. Turcotte

Augusten Burroughs' brother, John Elder Robinson, has also written a memoir but focused on growing up with Asperger's Syndrome.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

11. Even if only 10% is autobiographical, it's an outrageous story! nt

[Texasgal]

12. I've read ALL of Augustine Burroughs!

They are HILARIOUS!

Read " Magical Thinking" too... soooooo GOOD!

[Sarah Ibarruri]

13. They are definitely NOT boring! nt

[Neoma]

14. I didn't like Magical thinking.

From what I remember, it was because it wasn't about magical thinking.

[fe6252fes]

15. fascinating stuff, thanks.